


bones built in me

by gogollescent



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-03-26
Packaged: 2018-05-29 07:32:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6365023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gogollescent/pseuds/gogollescent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Burr cries, Hamilton ignores him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	bones built in me

Somehow they got back into—really _stayed_ in—the habit of having Burr to dinner. First it was Eliza’s business, mad as she was over a challenge Alexander hadn’t finished two drafts of; and then Burr was so sure of his welcome that Alexander felt a weakling curl of the old strained hope, that someone might know more than him, and deserve to be heard out.

Hearing out Burr was a crawl that might span lives, and several livers. He stopped, started, looked over his shoulder to see that you were behind him, then told a joke about women. Stole a Senate seat! Alexander was under no illusions about how _much_ the man held, even if chasing the dregs around made a gauzy puff of color. In an ideal world, Alexander would have cut a taphole in Burr’s presumably watertight scalp, taken him by the heels, and hung him up to drain.

Well? His wife died. Once Alex had badly wanted to inspect Theodosia Prevost, later Burr. Enough time with the Reynolds family cured him: he thought, _you married her?_ Still he was sorry to hear that her long illness had reached a bitter end—he was more used to contending with illness as the cost of survival, asked of anyone who couldn’t get loose. Illness without a recovery was not in line with his ideas, for himself or the republic.

But, sad and all, it should probably have put the dinners on pause. There was the daughter, and Burr’s oft-referred-to scheme to varnish her by hand; and there were social mores, and things. Mourning. Whatever. It was a disappointment to learn you could party in black. Then again, Burr always had.

“Cheer up,” Eliza said, when he mentioned it, hoping for that one expression—the one she got when she couldn’t _understand_ someone’s debauchery, but was working on it. No luck. Burr either transparent or not worth the hassle of close-reading. “You know the General likes you playing nice with the opposition.”

“Not with Burr, he doesn’t. You know what he told me about Burr? ‘Pull him off.’”

“I think you mean ‘let it go.’”

“No, no, it was definitely—”

Burr wasn’t bad company, or Alex would have liked him better; and the second post-Theodosia night found Alex relaxing into the trap. Stuck there, why not enjoy it? Even when Burr bit down—“Veterans, Hamilton! Veterans!”—it was nice to wriggle, force blood up around the points. A warming business, and before you could count one, two, three, Burr eased off, displaying, if not a soft mouth, then a fine sorry spaniel's grin. A smile from Burr was all the giddy lip of Angie with her tongue out. In twenty years he had turned from the older student, gliding down Broadway, to a dog that snapped at Sec. Hamilton’s heels. Was Burr really older? Alexander could never remember in which direction he’d been lying. And yet those first impressions were what set in the mind, long after they should’ve been dislodged. The precious, ass-backwards first impression, which belonged to you.

But it did matter that she was dead. Burr disappeared when most guests were halfway into their coats, bearing off a wineglass to show he meant to come back; and when he didn’t, actually, come back, Eliza said, “Well, that’s it then,” with a smile—she hadn’t noticed. She hadn’t _noticed_. Alexander accepted fate.

And tracked fate out to the gum trees. “Yo,” Burr said, raising his glass in a bad salute.

Alex considered him. It was a warm night—hot, by this country’s standards. Burr had his cravat loose, had blazed for himself a long, clear trail of neck. Inside the drawing room, Alexander remembered that lamps had flattered him, buffed his brown skin, and made something overt and wretched of the pinprick stubble… But here were no coy intimations. _“Recent widower, you know”—“a love match.”_ The signs of loss night-time relayed were definite. Rubble of a necktie. Under his eyes, tears that hadn’t made it too far, flashing because there was a full moon. Aww, Burr.

“Hey, Colonel,” he said, sitting down next to Burr on the marble bench that someone somewhere still wanted paying for. “What’s the rush?”

“I think that’s my line,” said Burr, after slightly too long a pause. He wasn’t swaying, but Alex would bet even money that he had recently completed a sway. Maybe Alexander just wasn’t used to seeing him lean so far forward, cup dangling between his knees—it was a posture he associated more with Jefferson, or of all people Lafayette.

“Well, so, you should take your advice.”

With an astounding hiccup, Burr seemed to. At least, the tears started up afresh, and if Burr had been crying in silent dishevelment before, now he was choking on an invisible serpent. Mouth open. He had straightened up some. His broad shoulders—was that just the coat? Alex seemed to remember a more diminutive, gangling figure—anyhow, his shoulders jumped in a tuneless way, as though some kid with a sharp stick were idly goading him.

Alexander let his gaze wander away to the gum trees. They weren’t doing that well; he had already heard all the jokes. Thirteen for their union, maybe he should have expected it. Too close-grown. He hated, hated, the banal meaning that others left, strewn like gorse-brush into the path. What he wanted was to run on a straight road of his own laying. He would have run on water if he could, and said only those things not thought of even once before.

What would it have been like, he wondered, if James Reynolds had died. Died back in the war, even, died in the West Indies of sickness. He could imagine meeting Maria, though she would have been just a kid—well, later, then, him unmarried somehow, her young and unattached. Poor but not so desperately poor, not so unlucky. Would he have wanted her? Yeah, he thought, seeing as though his head were held into it her breasts, and the red dress falling: the place where her breasts leveled off into corners, and her cleavage, too, all that skin that slid together as with the single purpose of giving off a breath of her perfume. He saw her face, above that, the big wet eyes, stirred-seeming. Someone had poked around there before him, with a painter’s firm, inconsiderate rigor. A shift in thought, and she _was_ looking at him, the eyes as bright as everything they saw. Not an atom of glory omitted, and she would be a good housewife, and thrifty, after all.

He hadn’t seen Maria in years. Two years! Why and when—

He came back to himself with a start, to find that Burr had put the glass down, and had his hands neatly steepled over his face, elbows on knees. Alexander had at some point gotten a hand between his shoulderblades. He could feel the warm, hard shaping of Burr’s back, a known surprise; he thought of Burr steering him to the Queen’s Head, palm hot at baby Alexander’s waist—but you couldn’t accuse him of impropriety, not Burr, with that serious frown. Laughing in soft huffs, back then, not loudly and nervously.

It was an extravagance as bad as the bench to think so and so much about one person, who could do him no good. Alexander pulled back. There weren't that many memories to refrain from.

After a while Burr showed his face, and at the same time stiffened, conceivably only just now realizing his position. But no, this was Burr, he would have been thinking about how to shrug Alexander off for five minutes before he managed it. It occurred to Alex that the whole exchange might even have created a problem—him, sitting with Burr while he wept, not asking questions about Theodosia. Burr might get fussy; people did. Was Alexander looking forward to that, the absurd late onset, pride sweeping in with double force to atone for a missed cue? _He_ was all sweaty. Of course he was sweating, it was warm. And he was getting over a cold. The smell of the trees seemed to hollow out his nostrils. But he was also afraid. A twinge under the ribs, and why? Not seriously because of any way Burr might yet find to go?

In any case, Burr was smiling at him.

“Still friends, Alexander?”

What a relief.


End file.
